AFTER luncheon that same day, the salutary process now at work in the vicar’s mind received a further stimulus. He was to find himself involved in a matter at once painful and unexpected, and the impression left upon him was deeply perplexing. At the urgent request of Professor Murdwell, who had just returned from New York, he had promised to go to Longwood that afternoon. Mr. Murdwell had been out of the country six months, and now that he had got back, almost his first act had been to send for the vicar. As Mr. Perry-Hennington made stately progress on an antiquated tricycle along the leafy carpet of the wind-bitten autumn lanes, he was far from anticipating the sad surprise that was in store. In the spring, when last at Longwood, he had been struck by the fact that his neighbor was not looking particularly well, and he had ventured to remark upon it. Mr. Murdwell had made light of the matter. But this afternoon, as soon as the vicar had been ushered into the cozy room in which the scientist sat alone, he received a shock. A great change had taken place in a few months. The alert, far-looking eyes had lost their luster, the cheeks had fallen in, the face of keenness and power was terribly ravaged by disease. Mr. Murdwell rose with the old air of courtesy to receive his visitor, but the effort was slow and painful. “Good of you to come, sir,” he said, motioning his visitor to a chair, and then half collapsing into his own. He looked at the vicar with a rather forlorn smile. “I’m a very sick man these days,” he said. The vicar was a little distressed by the air of complete helplessness. “I hope it’s nothing serious,” he said. “I’ve come home to die,” said Mr. Murdwell, with the calmness of a stoic. The words were a shock to the vicar. “The word ‘home’ mustn’t surprise you. I come of clean-run stock; I belong to the old faith and the old blood. As the world goes just now, I feel that I am among my own people, and I want you to lay me yonder in your little churchyard on a good Sussex hillside.” Mr. Perry-Hennington felt a growing dismay. “I venture to hope,” he said, “that you will be spared to us a long time yet.” “A week or so at the most.” Infinite weariness was in the voice. “You are a good and sensible man, and I am going to talk to you frankly. The thought of leaving my wife and girl hurts like a knife; and of course my work means a very great deal to me. I have simply lived in it; indeed the truth is, I have lived in it too much. And it is now being brought home to me that it is for the ultimate good of humanity that it should remain unfinished.” The vicar, grieved and amazed, was unable to say anything. He had quite a regard for this man of original and powerful mind, and it shocked him deeply to find him in his present state.